“That’s my middle name,” said Elliot. “Did I never tell you? Elliot ‘Uncomfortable Situations’ Schafer. I make situations uncomfortable, then I deal with them. It’s a really bad superpower.”
“We’re in our last year at Border camp,” said Myra, and she sounded a little sad. “We’re going to be sent to our new postings, and we have to decide where to apply. We won’t all see each other every day, not the people we love or the people we hate. Everything’s going to change.” She took a deep breath. “Peter and I are going to break up. I want to go live among the dwarves, and he would never want anything like that. I think we can stay friends, but just in case we can’t, I worried about which one of us you would choose.”
Elliot winked at her. “You shouldn’t worry.”
Myra tried not to smile, but did not entirely succeed. “Don’t you worry? If Serene goes back to the elven woods to be with her sweetheart, and if Luke goes with Dale wherever he’s posted, that you might lose touch and drift away from each other?”
Elliot worried. He just tried not to. He’d come back to the Border camp to be with them, the two people he loved, and he knew they both had obligations to family, to each other, to their duties, to their loved ones, which meant they might both leave him.
Drift away, Myra had said casually, as if it was not a terrifying phrase. Elliot could imagine being a boat, untied and unanchored, floating out to sea, with nobody looking for him.
He had only just worked out how to be with Luke, when they were both friends and knew it. He was afraid to think about losing it all.
“Serene’s Golden writes great letters. Maybe Golden will be another of my penpals.”
His attempt to sound light and laugh it off failed. Myra looked at him with her grave dark eyes.
“I’ll be one of your penpals,” she told him.
“You’d better,” said Elliot. “Dale Wavechaser, I suspect, will not.”
“No,” said Myra, and hesitated. “I was—surprised to see Dale running after Luke like he is. I would’ve thought Dale would be bothered by the harpy thing.”
Elliot opened his mouth, anger already sparking, but fury was quenched in the dark pools of her eyes.
“Dale hardly ever speaks to me,” Myra said gently, reminding him why she might know better than Elliot what someone’s attitude to nonhumans was. Elliot bowed his head, and Myra added: “He barely looks at me.”
“Dale is an idiot,” Elliot bit out. “And I told him so.”
“Did you?” said Myra. “I wondered what the fight was about.”
“I wasn’t nice to him,” Elliot admitted. “I was horrible to him, actually. But he said stuff about Luke I wouldn’t listen to from anyone. I’m not sorry.”
Myra made a face. “Did you tell Luke? I’d want to know something like that.”
“I didn’t,” said Elliot. “Luke has liked Dale for years. I wouldn’t know how to say it. And I’ve . . . in the past, I’ve been known to be . . . my interactions with Luke and my whole personality is . . .”
“Abrasive,” Myra suggested. “Deliberately off-putting but also accidentally off-putting.”
“Thanks, Myra,” said Elliot. “You get me.”
“I’ve been around you when Serene and Luke were sent off to war,” Myra said. “I remember. Also Peter sometimes wakes up crying from the traumatic dreams.”
Elliot shook his head. “Peter’s the weak link. But you see why I can’t be the one to ruin Luke’s life. He’d assume I wanted to, or that I thought it was funny, or I was exaggerating. I can’t do it.”
“No, I see what you mean,” said Myra. “Still, what if Dale can’t go through with it?”
“Go through with what, exactly?” Elliot asked, and paused. “I mean, no need to be explicit, I’ve seen many pictures in Peter’s private pornographic materials.”
“His what?”
“Never mind,” Elliot said firmly. “Forget I said anything about that.”
Myra regarded him suspiciously, then gave up. “I just mean, if the harpy thing bothers Dale that much, Luke’s going to see it sooner or later. I’m worried Luke’s going to get hurt.”
“Well since you put it that way, that’s a very reasonable concern,” said Elliot. “And I am also deeply worried! All right. Do you think we could sell Dale to pirates?”
Myra stared. “No, Elliot.”
“We have to do something!”
“No, Elliot,” said Myra. “We don’t. I was just talking. I was simply discussing our classmates and their relationships like a normal person. We do not have to sell anybody to pirates.”
“I’m a problem solver,” said Elliot. “I want to solve a problem.”
“I think I’m getting a migraine,” said Myra, gathering up her books.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“I really like you, Elliot,” Myra said. “But I can only take so much. You understand?”
He understood. There were many people who could not take as much as Myra: at least with Myra, he was pretty confident she would come back. He waved to her, a little disconsolately, as she went.
He could not concentrate on his trollish now. He read the line “Troll flesh has the appearance and texture of stone, but is not actually stone (FOOTNOTE: But their hearts are truly made of stone!)” four times. He pictured Dale breaking Luke’s heart in six different ways before he registered Luke coming up to his table in the library.
He felt a little better, then. Dale could not break Luke’s heart while Luke was in the library.
Elliot could not keep Luke under his eye at all times, though. He could barely keep an eye on Luke now, when he was trying to work out how trolls used tenses.
Luke actually looked pretty tense himself.
Maybe the heartbreak had already happened.
“Do you want to come to the Elven Tavern with me?” asked Luke, which was not a heartbroken thing to say.
He did not look heartbroken, exactly, Elliot decided, though he had never seen Luke heartbroken, so he could not know for sure. His shoulders were held stiff, wings clearly straining under the leather, and he was both staring at Elliot and trying to avoid Elliot’s eyes. Maybe he had news. Maybe he had terrible news. Elliot scanned Luke’s face. Elliot was not certain that he was great at analyzing people.
“Well, sure,” Elliot answered, when Luke started looking freaked out about the silence. “Let me finish up here. You go get Serene.”
“No,” Luke said. “I mean, do you want to go—with me. Just us. So we can—talk.”
It was terrible news, then.
“Oh my God,” said Elliot. “Are you sick? Is it harpy cancer?”
Luke started to laugh. Elliot started to talk about the statistics for harpy cancer. Luke would have known about the statistics if he had read the papers Elliot had written out for him. Luke was making his own life difficult, and he only had himself to blame.
“I don’t have harpy cancer,” Luke said, once he was done laughing. “Do you want to go out on a date with me?”